Thursday night's mayoral debate took all three Portland candidates -- state Rep. Jefferson Smith, Charlie Hales and Eileen Brady -- deep into the weeds on issues that are important to Northwest Portland, the event's setting.

The PDC took some hits, but also served as a symbol for how two candidates said they differ. Brady said PDC should be a job development agency, but said it was stuck using real-estate development tools. She said she wanted the commission to churn out more entrepreneurs.

Hales then criticized Brady, saying PDC should support small businesses not big businesses, and added that he'd rename the agency "PNDC" for the Portland Neighborhood Development Commission.

Asked how they would encourage businesses to fill empty retail spaces in Northwest Portland, all three re-iterated talking points from their stump speeches. Hales said city charges on new businesses created a very high hurdle for food carts that wanted to become restaurants, for example. Smith, who often scribbles in a legal pad as he waits for his turn to talk, started his answer with a list, another Smith hallmark of the campaign season. "Prosperity, sustainability, equity and democracy," Smith said, before adding that city rules that require ground-floor retail should be relaxed in some cases.

Brady used the question to repeat a line she's said before many times at campaign forums. Her "nightmare," she said, was that Portland would become a city of beautiful green buildings and shiny streetcars that are empty.

Hales -- who helped launch Portland's first streetcar line as a city commissioner in 2001 and worked for a decade as a streetcar consultant -- jumped on Brady for her remarks. "I don't think we're in any danger of empty streetcars," Hales said. "That's a nightmare scenario we probably don't need to be waking up about."

That's where Smith jumped in, pointing out that Brady was willing to ding the city transportation bureau for its financial decisions, yet she supported the controversial Columbia River Crossing.

Moderators then gave the audience a breather, asking the candidates to name the one bureau they would run if they could have only one. Under Portland's commission-style government, the mayor picks what bureaus to run and assigns others to colleagues on the City Council.

Hales and Brady both said the Portland Police Bureau. But Smith named the Office of Management and Finance, which controls the city's budget.

There were moments of laughter, especially in response to Smith's answers, which are often witty and self-deprecating but also at times a little muddled or abstract. Smith, who a few weeks ago slipped and said he was running for "governor," again referred last night to the role of the governor when talking about what he would do as mayor. (Smith, of course, spent much of Thursday in Salem, hashing out legislation in the February session.)

"It's a little hard to follow Jefferson," Brady said at one point, prompting a few chuckles in the room. Then she clarified. It's tough to go second, she meant. "I didn't mean it with that double entendre."